The Citric Acid Cycle

The citric acid cycle, (also known as either the Kreb’s or TCA cycle) is a biological pathway involved in cellular respiration. A series of chemical reactions form energy from pyruvate, in the form of ATP. More importantly, the citric acid cycle produces a large number of electron transporters, which proceed to the electron transport chain to provide much more energy in the form of ATP. The citric acid cycle only produces two ATP from a single gluscose molecule (one glucose molecule forms two pyruvate molecules), however, in aerobic conditions, the electron transporters go on to bring the estimated yield up to around 36 ATP per glucose molecule.